We have no reason to believe that Harvard's record as a landlord is any worse than that of others, and some reason to believe it may be better. The owners and managers of real estate are rarely loved by their tenants, nor are they in a business that encourages the most benign and altruistic practices. The Committee is of the opinion, however, that average treatment is not good enough, especially in regard to tenants who are older or burdened with families. we are, and we are judged to be, an institution devoted to humanistic values, and thus accountable to higher standards of conduct than those which prevail among most business firms. And we are an institution especially vulnerable to tenant complaints that arouse the sympathy of members of the university. We believe, therefore, that especially enlightened real estate management and relocation practices are required....
We recommend that any future displacement of tenants be accompanied by adequate and timely relocation assistance, including ample notice when the lease is signed that relocation may be necessary, personal assistance in finding other living quarters, and the provision of the equivalent of at, least one month's rent to ease the financial burden of moving.
The larger housing question, however, cannot be solved by Harvard alone. Even the problem of relocation will become increasingly difficult as the inflation in Boston and Cambridge rents continues. Nor can the university's contribution to the easing of this problem, especially for older residents living on fixed incomes, be limited to constructing additional housing for Harvard faculty and graduate students. For it seems quite likely that the existence of such new facilities will not simply (if at all) take Harvard personnel out of the Boston or Cambridge housing markets and place them in university buildings, but will in addition lure back to Cambridge and Boston students and faculty now living in the suburbs. Furthermore, existing Harvard housing now occupied by graduate students (such as Peabody Terrace) cannot be opened to non-Harvard residents without substantially increasing rents (even assuming, implausibly, that displacing students in favor of others would solve either group's housing problem). Such student buildings are legally exempt from taxation, though voluntary payments to the city in lieu of taxes are now made. Admitting non-students would terminate the tax exemption, the property taxes to be paid would be larger than the present in-lieu payments, and rents accordingly would have to be raised.
Thus the proper role of the university, in our opinion, is both to increase the supply of housing available for its own faculty and students and to serve as a catalytic agents which will facilitate efforts to increase the local housing supply generally (especially the supply of publicly assisted housing for persons of low and moderate incomes). To these ends, we make the following recommendations:
(1) The university should aggressively seek out appropriate sites within Cambridge on which housing for faculty and students may be built. Wherever possible (and we believe that it is possible), these sites should not now be devoted to residential use. We wish to increase, not simply to redistribute, the supply of housing.
(2) The university should proceed with its plans to build approximately 120 units of faculty housing on the Shady Hill site, which it now owns.
(3) We recommend that Harvard join with M.I.T. and other interested groups in urging the City of Cambridge to develop a larger program for publicly assisted housing.... It is vital that the supply of low cost housing (especially for the elderly) and of moderate cost housing (for both faculty and community residents) be increased: this cannot be done without joint public-private efforts of a kind an dscale not yet attempted in the city.... We believe it is possible for the city and the universities to onnounce, after appropriate study, a joint program to add a certain number of housing units with a five or ten year program. We would like to see the university, as part of this joint program, reconsider whether it might become the sponsor of one or more federally assisted housing programs. The university already owns property along the Charles River that might be the site of a federally subsidized development open to both faculty and non-Harvard citizens.
Hiring Policies
The first requirement is for Harvard, at the highest level, to adopt a comprehensive, affirmative, and specific personnel policy directed especially at the question of recruiting, hiring, training, and promoting of disadvantaged workers. Here, as elsewhere, action has been in response to pressure, but rarely in accord with any policy....
Second, as part of such a policy, the Personnel Office should inaugurate a vigorous and continuing program of recruitment in the poorer neighborhoods (black and Spanish-American) where barriers of discrimination over-laid by the habits of defeatism make economic advancement particularly difficult. Local employment agencies in these areas should be regularly visited and kept well-informed as to job opportunities at Harvard.
Third, the Personnel Office should be encouraged to go forward with a program it now has under consideration for a pre-job and apprentice training program....
Fourth, the university should continue to explore, as it has during the past few months, the possibility of joining with other universities and other large employers in the Boston area to draft a joint agreement that would insure that contractors and trade unions serving those institutions have an affirmative policy toward the hiring of blacks.
Finances
We believe that there are additional opportunities for investments in the community that are within the legitimate educational interests of the university.... Unless Harvard is willing to see community residents increasingly angry at the pressures created by the university's presence and its necessary expansion in educational facilities, and unless Harvard is willing to see students and faculty increasingly joining in community protests intended to give expression to this anger, it will have to reconsider the extent to which its local investments ought to be increased and directed toward projects that serve both neighborhood and university interests. Specifically, we believe that it is in the educational interests of the university to seek out, actively, ways of increasing the supply of moderate income housing in those areas of Cambridge and Boston on which the university impinges....
At the same time, we recognize that there are limits on how far the university should go in this direction. It does not have the unrestricted funds to solve the housing problems of two large cities. And it is not clear that it would be wise, even if it were legal, for the university to spend its funds on the scores of community-improvement projects that have from time to time been recommended to its attention. The university, it is sometime said, should support "community projects" by helping finance consumer cooperatives, Negro businesses, local cultural programs, neighborhood organizations, school innovations, and the like. Many of these projects are worthy of support; some might even fall within the educational purposes of the university; a few might be carried out without forcing Harvard to choose among competing community claimants for Harvard funds. But we believe that, in general, it is a mistake to expect the Harvard Corporation (or the Treasurer) to act as a surrogate community chest; it lacks the resources, the legal power, and the administrative mechanism to play any such role....
The Treasurer of Harvard cannot and should not choose from among various community projects those on which he might wish (if he were authorized) to spend money given to Harvard for educational purposes. But the persons who ultimately receive that money--students, faculty, administrators, and employees--can and should make such contributions. The university should create a mechanism that would facilitate such giving. This Foundation should created, however, unless it is clear that student and faculty interest in it is strong. We hope that the discussion of this proposal among members of the university will serve as a measure of it probable success.